Hell's Half Acre: Early Days in the Great Alberta Oil Patch

David W. Leonard is the project historian (Northern Alberta) in the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development. He
is the author of Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 and
co-author of The Lure of the Peace River Coun

Hell’s Half Acre is in a small coulee outside Turner Valley, Alberta,
near where, in 1914, Dingman Well #1 became the first true “gusher”
in the history of Western Canada’s oil patch. As exploration for black
gold continued, it became necessary to burn off small lakes of natural
gas that covered the oil deposits. Natural gas was then seen as more of
a nuisance than a valuable energy commodity in itself. As a result of
the burn-off, horrible odours filled the air for miles around, while
vast flares lit up the sky. Over the years, the terrain around the area
came to bear the scars of the effort, and these are still evident.
Hence, the descriptive name of the coulee.

The social history of the Turner Valley oil field is told in this
conversational account, which, as the author explains, “takes you back
to the original stories, to the kitchen tables and living rooms where
these unsung pioneers of the oil industry told their stories.” Much of
the information was gleaned from interviews that were conducted several
years ago in researching a thesis on the oil industry several years ago.
They are now used as source material for this popular perspective.
Newspaper articles and official documents are also employed, along with
a good selection of archival photos.

General readers who are otherwise unfamiliar with Turner Valley will
derive much more from this interesting, if somewhat rambling, treatment
than from the several exhaustive academic works that have been produced
on the subject over the years. The main criticism, even for a popular
work, lies in the absence of any map of the area. There is also no
index, and the sources of many quotations are not cited.